


solipsism

by YouAreMyDesign



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Author is full of himself, M/M, Pedophilia mention, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Prompt Fill, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Insert, bestiality mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouAreMyDesign/pseuds/YouAreMyDesign
Summary: "Our friend here has a solipsistic view," Hannibal says. Will huffs, and nods in agreement. "It is useless reasoning with a man who believes everything he sees and experiences is a product of his own mind."





	solipsism

**Author's Note:**

> For my bastard children in the kinkmeme. Keep being weird. ✌️

It's cold, so that it takes a few tries for the lighter to actually catch, burning the end of the fresh spliff cherry red. He breathes in, prepared for the instinctive tightening of his lungs, the burn in the back of his throat, the numbness as it comes to his teeth. He hisses through them, slouched on a weathered porch chair, the kind that people take to barbeques on the Fourth of July. The kind one inherits nowadays, instead of buying.

It creaks beneath his weight, his legs stretched out, heels to the dirty wooden porch floor, toes pointed up at a sharp angle. If the chair breaks, he's ass-first to the ground. Stretching, then relaxing, head tilted into the soft dipping crease of the back of the chair as he blinks up at the stars.

A half-empty Rockstar lists in the too-wide cup holder, he drags his fingertips around the popped can top, picks at it until the tab comes free, and tosses it towards the big, empty pineapple juice can that serves as an ashtray when he's smoking regular shit. He takes another drag, swallows through his coughs, and sighs another thin plume of smoke to the open air.

A beam of light breaks the darkness, the rumble of an engine – a borrowed car, or perhaps stolen, he would bet his life on it – coming close to the front of his house. He closes his eyes, takes another long, long drag, his lungs now used to the invasive smoke, and listens to the car come to a halt. Listens as the engine dies, two doors open, and feet crunch across the frost-dotted grass.

He smiles when shadows cast themselves across him, two heads silhouetted by the porch light. One of them wild-haired, the other with much sharper edges. "Hey guys," he greets warmly, raising his drink in greeting. "Have a seat."

The shadows obey in silence. There's a two-seater rocking bench next to him. He lets his head roll lazily, and smiles as they settle. "You guys are lookin' good," he says, taking another pull from the spliff. "Being on the run suits you."

Will looks more uncomfortable than anything else. Hannibal has the same placid look he always does, one leg folded over the other, fingers laced and resting on his knee. Maybe it's projection, wishful thinking, but Hannibal looks pleased to see him. He is certainly pleased to see them.

"Want something to drink?" he offers. "All I have is water and Mountain Dew. Drinking the last of these now." He lifts his drink, slurps at it loudly, sets it back down. "Sorry."

"Your offer is appreciated, but we're alright, thank you," Hannibal replies. He nods, and rolls his head back to blink at the stars again. His teeth have gone numb, the stars are dancing, and there's a lightness to his fingers and toes that precedes a really good high. "What's your name?"

He grins. "Do you give all your cows names?"

"Ones that are interesting." Will's the one who says that. He hums, and takes another drag. "We've read some of your work."

"Oh?" He lets the word out with another cloud of smoke. "Cool."

"That's all you have to say about it?" Will demands.

He shrugs, and finishes his drink, crushing the empty can and tossing it towards the ashtray. "I guess that depends," he admits, and rolls his head to meet their eyes again. He smiles, and blows a strand of hair out of his eyes. "Did you like them?"

"Some were certainly…interesting," Hannibal murmurs. "You have quite an imagination."

"Can't take all the credit," he says. "Inspiration comes from a lot of different places, wouldn't you agree?"

He lifts the spliff to his mouth, sucks smoke in until his lungs burn and clog his throat, turns his head and lets it out because it's impolite to blow smoke right at people. And, to his knowledge, neither of them partake.

Will lets out a sharp, unhappy-sounding breath, the mist of his own exhale joining the smoke. He smiles. "You shouldn't keep your feelings all bottled up, Will. I'm a big boy, I can handle criticism."

"Why do you write us doing those things?" Will demands.

He laughs, at that, new oxygen lighting the embers of the body high and flaring up his head. "Why do you guys kill and eat people?" he returns, and grins at Will. "Poetic license. Imagination."

"You're writing about us, real people," Will says sharply.

"Reality is a construct," he replies. "None of us are real, or all of us are real, but did Dante not write stories of Virgil? Is every remaking of a Bible story, every Shakespeare adaptation, meant to be banned? Can no one write tales of King Henry the Eighth, or Wilde, or Caesar? What about my next door neighbor, my boss at work, my husband – can I not write stories about them? They tell me so many."

"You seem to have some grasp of the classics," Hannibal notes. He still looks more amused than anything else, serene in the wake of Will's prickly irritation. "Does it give you some kind of gratification, to write about us doing all manner of immoral and violent things?"

He spreads his hands out wide, slouching and lax. "I live to serve," he replies. "If any of my words made any one person feel something, then I'm happy." His head tilts. "It's not like it actually happened. You're no more real to me than I am to you." A smile. "Passing fancies, an awkward conversation, soon forgotten with a cleared browsing history."

"I daresay we have lingered in each other's thoughts longer than the span of an awkward conversation," Hannibal says, smiling.

"Well, there's one way to end that," he replies. "But I don't think you're going to eat me. I'm tainted." He taps the spit-wet end of the spliff to his forehead and laughs, gestures at his forearms, riddled with swirls of black ink. "Even if you do, my words are still out there." He takes another drag. "It's not like people actually believe you're fucking dogs and kids, and Frankensteining each other back from the dead, and…. What else…?"

"Becoming gods," Hannibal murmurs.

"Oh, yes!"

"Gods?" Will asks, frowning.

"Yes, there's one such series where I am a god, and take you to my home, and make you into a titan-like creature, capable of killing gods in your own right." Hannibal smiles. "I read it on the plane."

Will's frown deepens. "…That sounds interesting," he concedes.

"There's more, Will," he murmurs, earning the man's sharp, ocean-blue eyes. Ocean-eyed boy, hello, hello. "There's so much more. And I'm just getting started." Will's eyes narrow, his nostrils flare just enough to make his aggravated exhale mist wide.

He is mostly done with his spliff, and taps the ash out, toes a smaller pottery tray from beneath his weathered camp chair and places the steaming butt within it, to salvage what he can later. "I can't, like I said before, take all the credit," he says, and runs a hand through his hair – mimics Will, though his is longer, and straighter, and falls to his shoulders in a mesh of honey and mouse-hair brown. "The source material isn't mine, but I don't see you beating down the doors of every author who writes you like I do." He grins. "Maybe there aren't any. My ego is getting quite big, isn't it? I might never be able to go back inside."

"Our friend here has a solipsistic view," Hannibal says. Will huffs, and nods in agreement. "It is useless reasoning with a man who believes everything he sees and experiences is a product of his own mind."

"Self-help books and solipsism go hand in hand, Doctor Lecter," he replies. "Be the change you wish to see and all that."

"And this is how you facilitate change," Hannibal murmurs, "by writing about two people you have never met, in as wild and outlandish a situation as you can stomach."

He smiles, widely, showing his teeth, and shrugs again.

"Does it delight you?" Hannibal presses. "Poking at the uncomfortable, the taboo, in the hopes of inciting a reaction?"

"No more than your own habits delight you," he replies. "I simply write, and put my work in a place others can see it. No worse than you yourself have done; you can't argue that. How else does like call to like? How else does one make friends?"

"Apparently, this way," Will says darkly.

He laughs. "Will, I meant no offense by it. Everything is warned for – I don't seek to catch people by surprise. Where's the fun in that? People go into haunted houses knowing they will be scared. Ride rollercoasters for the thrill, watch feel-good movies for the happy endings. I provide a service. Call it selfish if you will – I'll admit it is. The hubris of the artist demands attention for his work."

Hannibal is smiling, in that way that is more a crinkle around his eyes and a subtle bulge in his cheeks. Beside him, Will seems calmer, though far more disgruntled. He can't blame Will for that – he has written far more occurrences of Will's depravity and submission than Hannibal's. Perhaps that should be corrected.

"It's all copies," he says softly. "Alternates of alternates. I never claimed to know you, to understand you, I simply saw pieces of you both that fit together in a myriad of ways. The same way the Bard wrote formulaic comedies over and over. It's entertainment, gentlemen, nothing more."

Will stands, his hands dug deep to his pockets, and walks to the edge of the porch, gazing out towards the car. Hannibal's eyes follow him, for he was not wrong; they are magnetized to each other. Will exhales and Hannibal loses the air from his lungs.

He fishes in his pocket for another wrap. His grinder has just enough to make a pure blunt. He flattens the wrap on his thigh, gathers the butt of the spliff and unwraps it, tapping the remaining contents and adding more fresh green. He wraps it, licks it, lights it, wincing at the older, sour taste mixing with the fresh.

Will hums. "Will your husband be home soon?"

"No," he replies, taking his first new drag. Fresher green hits harder, fogs his brain, loosens his tongue. Hannibal's brows rise, and he meets his gaze. "We try and keep a healthy balance between longing and relief." He smiles. "Our red string of fate is more elastic than yours."

Will huffs, and turns to look at him, leaning against the porch railing. Their gazes don't break as he takes another hit, coughing around his mouthful, heels dragging in to brace himself on the ground. A hand to his mouth, wiping stray saliva, then to his jeans.

"You didn't come all this way to kill and eat me," he says. "Or maybe you did, but found my meat lacking. I'm not offended. But now you've chosen to stay, and linger a while. Why is that?"

Will's lips quirk in a smile, lopsided and savage. "Guess."

"Perhaps you find yourselves in need of some fresh inspiration," he says. "I imagine it's stifling, being on the run and having to keep looking over your shoulder." He pauses, and sighs, blows a cloud of smoke away from the both of them. "There's a haven here, if you want it."

Will's head tilts.

"You're already in my head, on the page," he adds with a shrug, taking another deep drag. "Might as well take the guest room. It's late, and you must be tired."

"If you know who and what we are, you know that’s a foolish thing to offer," Hannibal says lightly.

He shrugs again. "I accept nihilism when faced with evidence," he replies. He can't feel his teeth anymore, even with the edges of his thick and weed-dulled tongue. "And you called me solipsistic. You can't hurt me any more than my imagination allows."

Hannibal laughs, at that. "Because we're not real."

"And neither am I," he finishes with a nod. Finishes his short, fat little blunt in the same motion, and stubs it out in the pottery tray. He stands, swaying on his feet, and Hannibal rises as well, the two of them gravitated until their silhouettes merge, two against one. Worse odds, he's faced worse. "Or we all are, and isn't that a terrifying thing to consider?"

"Abhorrent, to be sure," Will says. "You're as bad as we are."

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," he replies with a smile. He steps back, and gestures to the door, laughing when they all go inside. "Hey guys, my big head still fits! That's a relief."

Inside there is not so much furniture as piles of blankets and pillows, nests laid out in sections in place of chairs. Will's brow arches, but he says nothing, and they are led up to the guest bedroom, which does have a bed. "Best place in the house," he says, and leaves them to it.

He goes downstairs again, and does not lock the door. The fiercest monsters are already trapped inside. There is a small futon in the corner, angled so that it faces the door and not the stairs, upon which rests a laptop, always in rest mode when not in use. It takes too long to boot up.

He sits, and opens it, the glow of his lock screen quickly dimmed, to a new blank page. He smiles, and tilts his head, hearing movement, seeing a shadow prowl in the single point of light coming from outside that reflects another person behind him.

"Curiosity always was your most easily-exploited personality trait," he says.

Behind him, Hannibal lets out a soft sound of amusement, and removes a pile of pillows near him, stacking them all up on each other and sitting down beside them. He is close enough that his knees, his shoes, his folded hands are in peripheral vision.

He rests his hands upon the keyboard. "Any requests?"

"I won't interrupt your process," Hannibal murmurs. "Simply write what you were going to, had we not shown up here."

He nods. "Will your husband join us, do you think?"

"Oh, I'm sure he will be down shortly. He's a curious man too."

"I know."

Hannibal laughs. "I suppose you do."

He pauses again, and then pulls up a half-finished piece. Hannibal leans forward, so that he can read the small print, and smiles. "Interesting."

"I don't think he'll like this one as much," he murmurs.

"We shall have to make it up to him, then," Hannibal says. "Perhaps more of that titan story of yours. I think he will enjoy that one, when he reads it. There's something rather intoxicating about reading yourself coming into that kind of power."

He smiles. "Sure," he says, and scrolls to the latest paragraph. "But I have to finish this first."

"Of course," Hannibal concedes with a gracious nod. "Please, continue."


End file.
